30 Painting Days in 30 Days- Painting 3

                                                                               Acrylic, 8x12"

Ok, here's a tip.  If you want to do a quick painting and REALLY do not want to overdo how much time you are going to spend...paint a sunset!    Yesterday, I got home from work quite late and wanted some family time as well as some painting time.  I decided to paint the sunset from my front yard.  Quite the challenge, but it met my criteria for a quick painting perfectly:  when you paint a sunset, there's an automatic cut-off.   I mean, there truly is a point where you just cannot see anymore.  That's what happened with the clouds.  I used LOTS of thick paint on the sky and then when it was time to put the clouds in, the paint was still wet.  Perhaps any oil painters reading this are thinking, "so, lay the paint over it."  Or, "you should have painted the clouds into the sky as you went along."  Well, with acrylics, I'm just so used to being able to overpaint DRY paint and not have it mix in with any wet paint underneath.  As you may be able to tell, my cloud color was mixing with the sky color underneath, and it changed the color and value and what I was trying to do.  Under normal circumstances, with acrylics, seriously, no problem...just wait awhile until it's dry and overpaint.  Fix it.  Well, this sunset wasn't having any of THAT.  The sun continued it's descent, regardless of whether I needed to see what I was doing or not.  The end.  End of painting.  Ready or NOT!! 

I do give myself a pat on the back for painting after working a very long, difficult day (boy did we pay at work for having Monday off).  And I like the idea of sunset paintings...paintings with a natural cut-off.  I think it would serve me to do more of these in the evenings.  Maybe I'll end up with a series.  It's a great exercise...try it!

(P.S.  I scanned this instead of shooting it with my camera.  It gave me good light, and I didn't need a steady hand.  It did change some of the values.  For instance, that hard edged line between the blue part and the fading yellow part is not really a hard edged line--it's got an area of lighter blue in between the darker blue and the yellow.  It's truly a gradual color change.  I don't know why it scanned this way.  Something else I cannot fix!)